White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt defends President Trump’s policies, citing a 40% drop in southern border apprehensions compared to Biden’s first month and economic gains like falling inflation (from 9%) and rising wages. She avoids clarifying English proficiency rules for gig drivers but insists truck safety standards remain non-negotiable. On Operation Southern Spear, she confirms dual targets: drug trafficking (linked to 300K+ U.S. deaths) and black-market oil sanctions against Iran’s IRGC, though won’t confirm domestic use of seized Venezuelan oil. Trump blames Democrats for Obamacare subsidy expirations affecting 20M Americans, promising action but deferring specifics, while accusing them of prolonging COVID-era market distortions until 2025. The briefing underscores Trump’s combative stance on border security, energy, and healthcare—prioritizing cost cuts and regulatory rollbacks over immediate fixes. [Automatically generated summary]
A bill to amend the Federal Water Pollution Control Act to make targeted reforms with respect to waters of the United States and other matters and for other purposes.
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Pursuant to Clause 1C of Rule 19, further consideration of H.R. 3898 is postponed.
Pursuant to Clause 12A of Rule 1, the Chair declares the House in recess for a period less than 15 minutes.
The House is now in recess.
Members are returning later this afternoon at 1:30 Eastern for votes, including on a Democratic resolution from Representative Al Green to impeach the president for, quote, high crimes and misdemeanors.
When lawmakers return, be sure to follow our live coverage of the House here on C-SPAN.
We now continue our live coverage, taking you to the White House, where Press Secretary Caroline Levitt is speaking to reporters.
At this point in 10 months under President Trump's unmatched leadership, we've seen less apprehensions overall than we saw in just one month under Joe Biden.
Again, let me repeat, in 10 months under President Trump, we've seen less apprehensions at the southern border than we saw in one month under the previous president.
Again, remarkable results.
All in all, the economy is back on track and ready to boom over the next three years.
Biden's inflation crisis is over.
Prices are coming down.
Wages are rising.
The border is fully secure.
And America's best days are to come.
President Trump has kept his word and delivered for the American people over the past year.
And he will not stop fighting, as you heard from him directly this week, until our country and every state in this country is better than ever before.
So with that, I will take your questions today.
I know there's a lot of news.
We'll start with our new media seat, Mr. Bowling.
It's great to see you here.
He's of Real America's Voice.
He's also the host of Edge, his interview and commentary podcast.
Caroline, thank you very much for this inviting me to the new media seat.
As you point out, affordability crisis.
It strikes me energy prices have been coming down aggressively since President Trump's second term, approaching $55 a barrel for oil, gasoline, as you point out, under $3 a barrel nationally, first time in five years.
By the way, that $55 barrel oil is about half of the peak under the last four years of the last administration, half the price.
Wholesale prices come down yet.
Affordability crisis, a lot of the folks in this room, a lot of legacy media, some people in the front row, seem to want to call this an affordability crisis right now, forgetting the fact that over the last four years prior, we hit 9% inflation.
Wages, as you point out, were stagnant at best, sometimes had dipped.
That's a real affordability crisis there, but they weren't really calling it that then.
You point out how President Trump is changing the affordability in America, but how will he ensure that the legacy media doesn't flip the script and change it so that they're using affordability as their word, their idea, versus what the American people who know much better.
Yeah, well, it's a great question, Eric, and it's a point of frustration for the President and for myself, I will say.
That's part of the reason I just kicked off this briefing today, setting the record straight with facts about the economic mess that the president inherited from his predecessor, Joe Biden.
And he's focused on digging our country and our economy out of that hole every day.
Things are getting better, and they will continue to.
And President Trump understands better than any politician in this city the pain that the American consumer has been feeling for years now because of the last administration's policies.
You heard him in the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania this past week campaigning and talking to these voters, saying, I was elected to fix this problem and I am fixing it.
Don't forget who created it, and that's the Democrats.
And I think when you hear the president talk about affordability, he's saying the Democrats are the greatest con artists in history because they are now trying to claim ownership of an issue that they created.
And every data point and every economic metric does, in fact, show that the economy is improving.
And so I do wish more people would report on those facts.
I do wish that more people would remind the American public how we got here and why.
It does not mean this president is discarding the feelings of the American people.
He gets it better than anyone, which is why his entire administration has been focused on the issue of the economy and energy prices since day one.
If I may follow up, it's reported that around 10,000 commercial driver's license operators have been pulled by your transportation secretary department.
Will the president apply that same metric?
The reason was they don't, the operators weren't speaking or reading English to a level that was safely, people thought they would safely be able to operate trucks on our roadways.
It's estimated in California around 40% of Uber drivers, Uber and Lyft drivers, don't speak English proficiently, and the number is 45% in Minnesota.
Will this same rule or metric apply to the gig economy like Uber and Lyft?
So I don't have any announcements on further regulations, if you will, from the Department of Transportation with respect to this issue.
However, I will just reiterate the Trump administration's position is that truck drivers, particularly those driving big rigs on our nation's road and highways, who have a great responsibility to keep the American public and their fellow citizens safe, should be speaking English and should have an ability to read English proficiently.
I think that's a very common sense policy to have.
And we've unfortunately seen, and the Department of Transportation has uncovered and is actively working to fix these state-sponsored commercial trucking driving driver licenses, which were going to people who are not qualified to be driving these massive trucks on American roads, and they're endangering the lives of our fellow citizens.
We've unfortunately seen many vehicle accidents across the country where people have lost their lives because of drivers that were just simply unqualified to be driving these trucks.
So I know this is something DOT and Secretary Duffy take very seriously.
What I will tell you, Peter, is that the Trump administration is focused on doing many things in the Western Hemisphere.
The President has taken a new approach that has not been taken by any administration for quite some time to actually focus on what's going on in our own backyard.
And there are two things that are very important to this administration.
Number one, stopping the flow of illegal drugs into the United States of America, which we know has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans.
The president promised on the campaign trail that he would demolish the foreign terrorist organizations and drug cartels around the world, especially right here in our own hemisphere.
And you have seen that he is delivering on that promise.
With respect to the oil and what happened yesterday, the Department of Justice requested and was approved for a warrant to seize a vessel because it's a sanctioned shadow vessel known for carrying black market sanctioned oil to the IRGC, which you know is a sanctioned entity.
So the president is committed to stopping the illegal flow of drugs into our country.
He's also fully committed to effectuating this administration's sanction policy, and that's what you saw and the world saw take place yesterday.
And because he said the president is trying to do a lot of things at once, he talks a lot about how he thinks the way to bring down prices for everything would be to bring down the cost of energy.
Would he use this seized Venezuelan oil to try to help Americans with affordability here in the United States?
Well, what I can tell you right now, the vessel has been seized, as you know.
And the Department of Justice did that in conjunction with the Coast Guard and the Department of War.
The vessel is currently undergoing a forfeitor process right now.
The United States currently has a full investigative team on the ground on the vessel, and individuals on board the vessel are being interviewed, and any relevant evidence is being seized.
With respect to the oil, that's a different issue.
As you know, Peter, the vessel will go to a U.S. port, and the United States does intend to seize the oil.
However, there is a legal process for the seizure of that oil, and that legal process will be followed.
The president is prepared to take action on health care and he wants Republicans on the Hill to do the same.
As you have seen, Senate Republicans put forth their own legislation earlier this week.
As for the subsidies that are set to expire, I would like to remind you and everybody at home why this is on the brink of happening.
Democrats wrote Obamacare.
They passed it without a single Republican vote and then they ballooned it with these expensive COVID subsidies that completely distorted the health insurance market.
And then they doubled down, extending those subsidies and setting their own expiration date right now in 2025, which the administration is obviously well aware of and we are working.
The president is working with his health care policy team here at the White House as well as Republicans on Capitol Hill to find a solution.
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He said he's working to find a solution.
He wants to see a solution to lower health care costs.
He does.
But these subsidies are expiring at the end of the year.
So what is the plan and what is he going to do to put this in place in the next two, three weeks?